This invention relates to a pneumatic tire for a passenger car, particularly of a radial structure, having improved rim clamping force, rim fittability and fittedness.
The structure of that portion of a pneumatic tire for a passenger car (hereinafter referred to merely as the "tire") around the bead portion influences important tire characteristics such as clamping force to a rim, fittability, fittedness and so forth. A chafer is disposed around the bead portions of the tire in order to improve these characteristics.
Conventionally, a fabric chafer reinforced by fiber cords and a rubber chafer made solely of rubber are available as the chafer described above. In the case of the fabric chafer, however, a non-uniform portion with a large rigidity occurs in such a manner as to cross transversely the tire circumferential direction due to mutual splice of the raw material sheet end portions that occurs at the time of tire molding, so that rim fittability gets deteriorated and fittedness is inferior. The rubber chafer causes the problems in that the shape is unstable, the rim clamping force is not sufficient and rim deviation and rim fall-off are likely to occur.